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Sunday, 30 November 2014

Directorial debuts are kind of a bizarre thing to see happen
yourself. Sure, looking at films like Alien 3 or The Pleasure Garden can be
interesting considering what their respective directors David Fincher and
Alfred Hitchcock would go on to make, but that’s only because of the gift of
hindsight and knowing that they did
go on to make more movies and become regarded as great directors. It’s another
thing to see a directorial debut and it being the only thing to go on: It could
be a great film and then the director drops off of the radar; it could be awful
and yet the director goes on to make even more like it; or any happy medium
between the two scales. A recent example of this going right would be
Chronicle, an excellent found footage movie (Yes, those exist) whose director
Josh Trank is currently working on the new Fantastic Four movie. Will we get
such a success story with this? Only time will tell, but for the time being let’s
look at today’s film. This is Nightcrawler.

The plot: Lou (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) is a small-time
thief who, after seeing a cameraman (played by Bill Paxton) film the scene of a
car crash to sell to a news channel, decides to get into the business himself.
However, the more dedicated he gets to the line of work, the more unhinged he
becomes.

This movie is very centered on Jake Gyllenhaal’s character,
and as such it is pretty much the key talking point here. Lou, on paper, is a
very neurotic, career-driven and sociopathic person. His dialogue is blunt and
very direct, almost to the point of being non-human. Given how much of this
character takes up the running time, along with how he’s written, the director
seriously needed to pair the character with a capable actor. Gyllenhaal, in 2013’s
Prisoners, showed that he was more than capable of playing a character that is
perpetually toeing the line between calm and break everything and everyone in
sight, something that he readily puts to use in this film. Gyllenhaal as Lou is
cold, calculating, adorkable, funny, sharp, sinister and creepy, sometimes all at the same time. It is an
impressive feat of acting to be able to pull the character the way he does
here. Think if Jeff Goldblum played Patrick Bateman and you’re in the ballpark
of how this character comes across: Awkward and terrifying all at once. A lot of his dialogue involves him
negotiating with people for various reasons, as if he was selling real estate
every second of every day of his life and he was damn good at doing it. His
dialogue, in lesser hands, could’ve come across disastrously, but despite his
directness the character is repeatedly able to convince people to take his
offers, no matter how insane they may be, and you easily believe it because of
Gyllenhaal’s delivery. Not only that, he is downright scary in the majority of
this film too. Because of how unpredictable Lou comes across as, you’re
gripping at the armrests of your seat because you have no idea what he’s going
to do next; even better, the writing is done in such a way that they manage to
look the most obvious option Lou has in some scenes and then goes several steps
further, making for a genuinely intense character to watch.

How are the rest of the cast? Well, that’s the other thing:
The cast list here is relatively small. In terms of recognizable actors, we
have Rene Russo as the news director for a TV station and Bill Paxton as Joe,
Lou’s inspiration and later rival, both of whom do very well in their roles.
Other than that, aside from rapper Riz Ahmed as Lou’s assistant Rick, there isn’t
anyone of note. Then again, given the powerhouse performance from our lead, you
could have had anyone in the supporting cast and they would still be
overshadowed.

After watching Gone Girl not that long ago, I honestly
thought I would have had my fill of movies that involve manipulation of the
mass media, but here comes Nightcrawler to give us some more from a different
angle: Manipulation of the news as product, to be processed, packaged and
delivered to the masses. This film does a great job at showing the disconnect
between the reality as seen through the TV and the reality as seen through our
own eyes, not to mention some nice subtle commentary on the difficult economic
times and what it can drive some people to do out of desperation for a living.
The best possible example of the disconnect at work is in how it portrays the
more violent crime scenes on film: Aside from one or two moments, it's never directly through the real-life
camera; it’s either through the viewfinder of an in-universe camera or being
played back as already-recorded footage. That, on its own, would be enough to
praise this movie for, but through some key scenes at the news station, we get
even more helpings of this with real-time manipulation of the news anchors by
Rene Russo’s character into building up the story being shown in Lou’s footage.
Going back to what I was saying about directorial debuts and what they might
hold, going by this movie alone, I really hope that Dan Gilroy sticks it out in
the director’s chair and brings us even more films of this high standard.

All in all, this is an extremely tense and nail-biting
thriller, mostly driven by Jake Gyllenhaal’s jaw-dropping performance in the
lead role; this is something that is right up there as one of his best to date,
if not the best. This goes above
Saving Mr. Banks, as the thrills here are more engaging, but just below These
Final Hours, whose bleakness keeps a constant feeling in the viewer throughout
whereas here it has definite peaks where the tension gets to its best heights.
I urge everyone who reads this to check out Nightcrawler for themselves.

Saturday, 29 November 2014

Whether it was watching TV standards like The Late Show and
Kath & Kim, seeing stand-up gigs by the likes of Adam Hills and Carl
Barron, or just by living in this country myself, I can’t think of a single
time in my life when I wasn’t being influenced by Australian comedy. To quote
(as best as I can remember) the comedian Vince Sorrenti: “We don’t need to protect
the Australian way of life; the Australian way of life is our fucking protection. It’s the most benign existence on Earth.”
We are easily the most laidback people on the planet and it shows in our
collective comedy styling, given how quick we are to take the piss out of
ourselves and everyone else within earshot. To carry on this tradition, we have
today’s film: This is Fat Pizza Vs. Housos.

The plot: Bobo (played by John Boxer) has just been released
from his 15-year stint in jail, only to return and find that his pizza shop has
been shut down. Along with his mother (played by Maria Vanuti), they both buy a
new pizza place in the town of Sunnyvale. If this sounds abrupt, that’s only because
that’s as much coherency as I can muster for what loosely counts as a plot
here. Seriously, this film is so scattershot that I am barely able to put it in
words. Not that it’s hard to understand, but that it is very difficult to articulate
what exactly happens in the 90 or so minutes of run time; it probably doesn’t
help that this is my first time experiencing anything involving either Pizza or Housos.

For my international readers, going through the cast list
for a movie like this would just be ringing on deaf ears, but needless to say
we’re dealing with some real unsung comedians here: Tahir, Garry Who, Nick “The
Wog Boy” Giannopoulos as well as the previously mentioned Vince Sorrenti. We also get some Aussie radio talent like
Jonesy as the political punching bag Premier Campbell Abbott as well as Kyle
Sandilands… okay, maybe ‘talent’ isn’t the best word to use to describe him but it was least fun seeing him get
beaten up with a thong. For the record, that's another word for flip-flip; this wasn't some weird thing involving underwear slingshots... although that would have been hilarious to see.

Okay, might as well tackle the flannelette-wearing elephant
in the room: The comedy. This takes the South Park road of satirical comedy:
Bury whatever commentary you want to make under layers upon layers of political
incorrectness. This movie pretty much tackles every Aussie stereotype in the book
(Not ‘Crocodile Dundee’ stereotypes, I mean the ones that actually exist): Coppers, polies, wogs, lebs, bogans, bikies, boat
people; you name it, director/writer/actor Paul Fenech has it vivisected and on
display somewhere on screen. As I’ve already mentioned, I’m unfamiliar with
Fenech’s works like Pizza or Housos, but if this is anything to go by than I definitely want to see more. The dialogue is thicker than concrete with Aussie
slanguage, the physical comedy mostly focuses on smacking people in the face,
and the plot itself is all kinds of bizarre… but that’s not to say that it’s
stupid. The most obvious satire here would be on current Prime Minister Tony
Abbott through the Premier, a man who focuses more on the one guy who
embarrassed him in front of the cameras instead of the ensuing gang war going
on in Sunnyvale. Given Tony “Let’s see how badly I can make my own country look
to everyone else at G20” Abbott’s track record of late, even this might be a
bit lenient. We also get some running commentary on the treatment of the unemployed
in Australia, the racial profiling at work in various departments of government
and law enforcement, as well as a sly jab at people’s overuse of mobile phones,
and this kind of batshit story honestly feels like the best way to deliver this
kind of satire.

The story here is very episodic, in that very little of what
happens seems to correlate with one another: We have a bikie gang, a guy
dealing drugs out of his pizza deliveries, an Italian mother influencing the
government through creating Centerlink schemes to further her son’s business
and the thongarang, the most effective non-lethal weapon in history. It’s all
over the place but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t consistently make me laugh.
The pacing is just right so that the small jokes rush by and pave the way for
more to come by and smack you in the face. Really, the only problem with the
comedy here is how dated some of it feels: References to Schapelle Corby (who I
swear is actually in the film, but I
couldn’t find confirmation on that), 9/11; the plot intentionally takes a 15
year gap between Bobo’s arrest and his release, supposedly so they can make
jokes about how some characters don’t know how to tweet or use Facebook, but it
does stick out a fair way whenever it happens.

The soundtrack, put simply, is awesome. Maybe it’s my
weakness for Aussie hip-hop shining through, but the handful of tracks by rap
group Funkoars sound great here, as well as some nice pub rock tunes by local
acts like Heaven The Axe. Some of the lyrics to the songs are kind of goofy,
given how a lot of them talk about pizzas, but the beats underneath them are
serious bangers. Even when we’re dealing with returning Pizza character Sleek
the Elite and his rhyming, there’s just something organic about it that fits
with the style of the film overall; he's like an Aussie Biz Markie.

All in all, I had a blast with this movie. I’ll admit that I
went into this not expecting to like it at all, but leaving it I was completely
confused as to why I would ever think that in the first place. For my fellow
Aussies, no question: See this movie and help support Australian filmmaking. For my
international readers, if you’re capable of cutting through both the accents
and the Aussie slang in the dialogue, you might just find something fun in
this. It ranks higher than The Maze Runner, as this has me even more hyped to
see a sequel than that did, but lower than Dallas Buyers Club because as funny as this was,
my soul would never stop gnawing at me if I ranked this above that
heart-twister. It's 'very good-to-excellent'; go an fuckin' watch it already, will ya?!

Friday, 28 November 2014

Sometimes, we see movies for reasons that are in no way
rational; the fact that I have seen The Room in cinemas twice this year is
proof enough of that. I’ve said before that I try not to let my expectations
dictate how I anticipate a movie, but every so often I’ll get kind of hyped for
a movie just because an actor I like is in it. This is… a weird case. I say
weird because the actor I wanted to see here isn’t even one of the main
characters. In fact, I had no idea just how much screen time he was going to
get. Who that actor is I’ll get to momentarily. For now, this is Alexander And
The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day… long title is long.

The plot: Alexander (played by Ed Oxenbould) has had a bad
day, like every other day. However when he tries to get some sympathy from his
family, he gets none since they haven’t had any bad days. So, as a birthday
wish, Alexander wishes for them to know what it feels like. His wish comes true
and *sigh* hijinks ensue.

As much as I would love to be making mocking comparisons
between Alexander And The Long Name and Liar Liar, given how the two both have
main plots started by a birthday wish, I will try to avoid that as best as I
can. One reason for that is because Alexander And The Word Salad makes the wise
move and has the plot play out in such a way that it makes sense as just an
unfortunate sequence of events without having to bring birthday wish mumbo
jumbo into it. The other reason is that this isn’t even close to being as funny
as Liar Liar. The comedic writing here has two modes: Mild chuckles, and so
telegraphed that even the child sitting the row behind me at the cinema could
see them coming (And, for once, I’m not kidding). The only other movie from
this year that had jokes I could see this far ahead was Keith Lemon: The Film,
and I will at least give this film credit for having the comedy be better than that piece of trash (Then again, not
hard to do). The plot, not to mention the title, kind of gives away the sort of
comedy we get here: Murphy’s Comedy, where everything bad that can happen does.
However, most movies tend to work around this obvious framework with creative
writing so that, when you know that something will happen, you’re still not
entirely sure what will happen and
the anticipation built up on that makes for some spontaneous laughs. Here, for
the most part, all we get instead is a mild variety of how far away you can see
the jokes from, with some being less obvious than others. A good example of
this early on is when Alexander is leaving his house for a car pool to school.
You know those played-out slow motion scenes when our main character walks
towards a love interest but ends up tripping on something? Yeah, we get that
here too.

In a movie that relies prominently on comedy, if your writing
falters then you can make up for it with good performances. Thankfully, we
actually do get a bit of that here, mainly from Steve Carell who plays
Alexander’s dad Ben. The man’s dry delivery, relentless optimism and great
sense of comedic timing helps pick up more than a few of the dud jokes he’s
given, allowing him to raise a lot of the scenes involving him. I mean, anyone
who is able to be a flaming pirate on screen and sell it has to be given props
(Once again, not kidding). Actually, a lot of the acting from our main cast is
good: Aside from Alexander and his dad, we also have Jennifer Garner as the
mother Kelly, Dylan Minnette as the older brother Anthony and Kerris Dorsey as the
older sister Emily, all of whom do the best that they can with what they have.
We also have some rather… interesting bit parts that elevate things as well:
Jennifer Coolidge as a driving instructor, Burn Gorman as a school play
director, Dick Van Dyke as himself (Your guess is as good as mine on that one)
and Donald Glover as a game designer that Ben has a job interview with. Yeah, I’ll
admit, I just wanted to see this because I saw Donald Glover in the trailer; I
love his stand-up, his work on Community and his rap music, oddly enough for the
same reason in that they are all legitimately funny. It’s a dumb reason to want
to see this movie, but at least I got some decent mileage out of his scenes.
Since he’s connected to Ben’s storyline, his scenes were mostly of just him and
Carell bouncing off of each other which worked surprisingly well. One final note on the acting: Alexander's best friend is one of the most blatant token black characters I've seen in a long while. Blerg.

Actually, since the father is one of this film’s saving
graces, I might as well talk about his place in the plot and try to read into
it a bit. From the very beginning, he is touted as being the optimist of the
family and shows it in more ways than one. While the family gets bad crap
happen to them all day, which range from minor to you’re going to be having bad
days for a while as a result of this, his day remains relatively fine. Hell,
his ultimate breaking point, when he stops looking at the glass half-full and more
as the glass to pour on someone’s head in anger, is the flaming pirate bit I
mentioned earlier, a moment that could have ended up a lot worse than it did
and he’s lucky for it. Given the movie’s overall message about taking the good
with the bad (I still can’t get the Facts Of Life theme out of my head), maybe
Ben’s character is meant to show another message about staying positive
throughout and your day will be better because of it. Given how trite the main
message is, having something buried a little deeper in the text is really
surprising, not to mention appreciated as someone who loves reading too far
into things. Of course, there are more than a few story issues here, not the
least of which being that because of how realistic the damage caused on the
titular day is, they could have easily left out the birthday wish and just left
it ambiguous. Seriously, considering it’s supposed to be the main plot gear for
the movie, it’s swept under the rug fairly quickly and only vaguely alluded to
throughout, before being mentioned flat-out once and never again. Also, the
mother’s plotline is wrapped up way
too conveniently; there’s no way in hell that she would have gotten away with
what had happened the way she did and the resolution is weak in it of itself.

All in all, while not a bad movie per say, it would only serve as
a mild diversion for families. I can at least safely recommend this as a family film,
because there are a few jokes that are aimed at adults, but don’t be surprised
if you barely remember a thing about it the day after seeing it. This ranks higher
than Let’s Be Cops, as the main characters aren’t nearly as unlikeable
initially, but lower than The House Of Magic, which while also pretty forgettable
has better entertainment value as a family film. It’s mediocre; maybe wait for
the DVD on this one.

Sunday, 23 November 2014

As I write this, I am also working on a presentation about
film tastes for a class I’m taking. In it, among other things, I make mention
of critical hype and how it can ultimately damage a person’s film experience:
You build up too much hype about how good (or bad) something is and you could
end up giving someone else expectations that cannot possibly be met; this is the
Detox Effect at work. With how much I was looking forward to today’s film after
my last review, as well as how much talk I’ve seen involving this movie both in
and out of the internet, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was cautious.
Nevertheless, this is The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.

The plot: After literally destroying the Hunger Games at the
Quarter Quell, Katniss (played by Jennifer Lawrence) has been chosen by the
resistance against President Snow (played by Donald Sutherland) to be their
symbol: The Mockingjay. While creating a counter-campaign against Snow, the
President has also enlisted Peeta (played by Josh Hutcherson) to be the
spokesman for the Capitol. Amidst the battle of the P.R. campaigns, the rebels
and the Capitol are preparing for civil war, one that will decide the fate of
Panem.

As with the rest of the series, the acting is outstanding:
Jennifer Lawrence continues to impress with her intense and emotional
performance; Philip Seymour Hoffman shows great humour and intelligence in his
portrayal of Plutarch, the head of the rebellion’s propaganda campaign,
bringing to mind Robert De Niro’s character from Wag The Dog in his political
manipulations; Donald Sutherland reaches new levels of creepy and intimidating here as President Snow; Sam Claflin, despite his role as Finnick being reduced, still does great as the cocky yet loyal ally; Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks continue to shine in their returning roles as Haymitch and Effie; and Jeffrey Wright does exceptionally as Beetee, the sarcastic tech whiz of the group. We also get some newcomers such as Julianne Moore as President
Coin, leader of the rebels, Natalie Dormer as Cressida, the director of the
propaganda campaign, and Mahershala Ali as Boggs, one of Coin’s top soldiers. I
have to give special mention to Ali’s performance because, despite Boggs mostly
being a background character, he has that air of badass surrounding him that
just sells it through and through. If there’s any slight I can make against the acting here, it’s that we didn’t get see more of Johanna in this one.

I would also like to make a slight addendum
to my review of Catching Fire: I feel like I haven’t given nearly enough credit to Josh
Hutcherson as Peeta and here is where I rectify that. Hutcherson has
previously done very well in his role, having great chemistry with Lawrence as
well as playing a very convincing spin doctor in building up his and Peeta’s
initially false relationship. Here, however, he goes through the wringer. I won’t
say exactly what happens for spoiler reasons, but needless to say the man gives
it his all here and I am highly anticipating not only his performance in part
two, but also in Escobar: Paradise Lost.

One of the main criticisms I’ve seen thrown at this movie is
that it’s not as heavy on the action as the last two, and to be fair that is
true. However, the story being told here and the way they tell it more than
makes up for it. I made special mention last time of the great-looking computer
effects in Catching Fire, but there is substantially less of that here.
Instead, most of the effort seems to have gone into the set design and
practical effects, both of which are very well done. The practical effects in
particular, as seen in the locales of District 12 and District 8 where we get
some seriously harrowing and stomach-churning visuals. As a whole, this plays
out more like a political thriller than the action-adventure films we’ve been
getting so far, but at least those films had this thread consistently running
through them so this is in no way jarring. If anything, not having as many action
set pieces so that they can put more emphasis on the writing is a good thing
because this is a very well-written script. It does start off with a couple of
clunky metaphors (“You electrified the nation” and the like), but before too
long it really kicks in with its depiction of the many shades of grey involved
with war, specifically civil war, as well as a look into the filmmaking process
through the filming for the Mockingjay campaign. There’s one scene where
Katniss has to recite her lines for one of their promos, and the way it’s shown
is almost like being a fly on the wall at an acting audition. We have Katniss
and Peeta essentially being the poster children for their respective sides, and
what’s fascinating is how what they’re both saying makes sense: Katniss is
right in that Snow’s regime is bringing nothing but destruction, but Peeta is
right in that the rebellion is leading to even more people dying as a result.
Given the usual pedigree for YA adaptations we’ve been getting of late, having
a conflict that is this far from one-sided is very refreshing.

Something else of major note here is the music. The series has
had a very good score throughout, but it’s here that it transcends that into
becoming something truly beautiful. Lawrence’s rendition of the Lumineers’ song
The Hanging Tree has already made a big splash online, but within the context
of the film proper is when it makes that transcendence. Again, I won’t spoil it
completely, but needless to say that the scene surrounding it might be one of
the most powerful cinematic moments of the year… and it is here that I begin to
realize how hypocritical it was of me to start this review with how critical
hype can ruin a movie for some people. Oops.

All in all, I don’t know how this is happening but this film
series seems to be getting better and better with each installment. While not
as heavy on action as before, this decides to up the ante
on its political undertones, transforming the already prevalent commentary on
the cult of celebrity into one on iconography as a whole; all with a great cast to deliver it all. Aside from the lack of Johanna, the only real downside here is the year-long wait for the finale. This ranks higher than Only Lovers Left Alive,
as the writing has a bit more meat to it, but just below Predestination, which I
suspect is only because I have more familiar with that movie’s source material
than this one’s. If you haven’t seen this already, I highly advise you do so.
If the reason you haven’t is because you haven’t seen the other films yet, then
I recommend you watch them also. Of course, I would love to hear your own
opinions on this movie. Do you agree? Disagree? Why, and by how much? Feel free
to leave a comment below.

Saturday, 22 November 2014

Upon hitting cinemas, The Hunger Games ushered in what I
like to call the ‘Third Wave of Modern YA Adaptations’. The first wave was
caused by the early Harry Potter films and created a desire for stories
involving destined child heroes in fantasy settings (well, a more immediate
desire for them at any rate) with adaptations of The Chronicles Of Narnia and
the like. The second wave was caused by the simultaneously over and
under-abused punchline that is the Twilight series, creating a want to see
romantic stories involving the undead. Such films that fall under this would
include Red Riding Hood, The Host and Warm Bodies, along with many other trite
bits of fluff. With the third wave, we have a sudden influx of apocalyptic
settings, veering more into science-fiction than fantasy, and the ever-growing
need to be taken seriously. A lot of overlap exists between these three. In
2014 alone, we’ve had Divergent, The Giver and The Maze Runner as by-products
of the Third Wave, not to mention The Hunger Games’ own Mockingjay which has
just come out. Before I get to that
movie though (and yes, I will be reviewing it soon enough), I figured I should
catch up a bit on the series, having only seen the first movie for 2012’s list
(It was really good, but mostly because of the second half). As such, today’s
film will be The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

The plot: In the wake of Katniss (played by Jennifer
Lawrence) and Peeta (played by Josh Hutcherson) winning the previous Hunger
Games, murmurs of revolution against President Snow (played by Donald
Sutherland) are starting to rise, along with Katniss having to go through a
chaotic cycle of traumatic memories of the Games and her fabricated
relationship with Peeta. In the midst of all this, both Katniss and Peeta have
been drafted to once again take part in a special edition of the Hunger Games,
where all of the competitors are former Victors of the Games. Katniss and Peeta
must work together to make it through the Games alive once again.

Rule Of Sequels #44: If you can’t make it, remake it. Time and
time again have we seen film sequels just rehash the original to make a quick
buck, and given how the story here also involves repeating what we saw in the
first movie, I was immediately skeptical about this doing the same. However, it
quickly becomes apparent that this isn’t the case here. If anything, this seems
to have improved on a lot of what
made the original work, as well as ironing out some of its problems as well. For
one thing, I personally found quite a few of the special effects in the
original to be a bit obvious, but I was willing to overlook that at the time
because in-story they were supposed to be computer effects. Here, given how
much better the fires and wildlife look in comparison (among other things), now
I feel like I was a bit too forgiving to the original. Then again, Weta Digital
(who, among other films, worked on The Lord Of The Rings, Avatar and the new
Planet Of The Apes movies) is listed as one of the companies who helped make
the effects for this movie, so I guess it’s to be expected.

I’ve already mentioned how the second half of the original
is where it gets really good, but here it’s a lot more consistent. In the first
half, we get the usual running commentary on the cult of celebrity that annoyed
me slightly before, but here it builds on what has already been established and
comes out better for it. We have Katniss having to deal with a lot of events due to her becoming a
Victor of the Games: Needing to continue the charade of being in a relationship
with Peeta, trying to stay off the President’s kill list given how she has
become a source of inspiration for the rebellion, not to mention the PTSD she’s
going through as a result of all the death she witnessed in the Games; all of
this while she has to keep a happy face in front of the cameras for the public
while she’s on her Victory Tour. On top of this, we have a love triangle
between Katniss, Peeta and Gale… and it’s here where we get one of this movie’s
big snags. There are very few things in this world that are able to make a love
triangle not being an annoying plot thread that I usually skip over when
re-watching movies and TV shows. Unfortunately this isn’t one of them, and
given how the love triangle ties into the relationship between Katniss and
Peeta, a major plot thread, it is also unavoidable. However, in its defense, this
does handle it better than most, as all parties involved are at least aware of
the different sides of what’s going on rather than keeping things secret and
just making it worse, a la most romantic comedies with this plot line, but all
the same. Then in the second half, we get the Game itself which was initially
worrying given how similar it looks to the first (Traded in a forest for a
jungle? Really?) but between the character interactions, the new mechanics at
play, as well as the overall story, it actually comes out stronger than the
first’s already high benchmark.

Now, to one of the bigger points for this movie: The
performances. This has an immensely impressive cast, with everyone giving a
great portrayal of their character: Jennifer Lawrence continues to shine as
Katniss, Woody Harrelson is funny and endearing as Katniss’ mentor Haymitch,
Donald Sutherland is subdued and intimidating as Snow and Stanley Tucci hits
that sweet spot of both annoying and funny as the zany talk show host Caesar.
Along with this, we also have some newcomers to the cast: Sam Claflin as
Finnick, the cocky but loyal pretty boy; Jeffrey Wright as Beetee, the tech
whiz who comes up with some really good ideas to win the Games; Lynn Cohen as Mags, Finnick’s silent mentor; Jena Malone as Johanna, the
Valkyrie Bitch who makes for some of the best moments in this film; and the
late great Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch, the new Gamemaker replacing
Seneca from the original, among others. While they do very well with their roles,
the most exceptional thing of note is the fact that the characters who participate
in the Games actually have roles. In
the original, all we got was Katniss, Peeta, Rue and a group of sociopaths.
Here, it feels more like the cast have been fleshed out a bit more and are
legitimately fun to watch on screen.

All in all, this is a damn good movie. Even though we are
currently in a mild state of Jennifer Lawrence overexposure, given how good the
movies she’s in are (including this one), I can only see that as a good thing.
This is one of those rare sequels that actually manages to improve on the
original, while still holding onto what made it good and not just flat-out
copying it to the letter, continuing with its strong acting, writing and story
themes of how simple actions can lead to much larger outcomes. This ranks
higher than Captain Phillips, purely because I got more enjoyment out of the
sci-fi setting here, and but lower than Django Unchained, which as a whole still made for a more fulfilling experience of a film. On the 2013 list, this one ranks among the
best of the year. Even if you haven’t seen the original yet, I highly recommend
checking them both out. As for the new one… we’ll just have to wait and see.

Thursday, 20 November 2014

It’s a bit of a double-edged sword seeing Australian names
in mainstream cinema: Sometimes you get James Wan, director of The Conjuring as
well as the original Saw; and sometimes you get Baz Luhrman, director of Moulin
Rouge and Australia, among other pieces of pretentious dribble. I love seeing
this great (at times) country I live in being represented in Hollywood, but it
doesn’t always yield the best results. With today’s film, we have Stuart
Beattie as writer/director who’s had a very murky track record of late, having
been a co-writer on G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, the aforementioned Australia
as well as a re-writer on Punisher: War Zone. This is I, Frankenstein.

The plot: Frankenstein (played by Aaron Eckhart) has been on
Earth for 200 years, being hunted by demons under the command of demon prince
Naberius (played by Bill Nighy). Naberius wants Frankenstein for his plans, and
the Gargoyles, the group that fights against the demons, have to keep
Frankenstein out of their grasp while the monster himself just wants answers.

I feel like a bit of a broken record here, as once again I
have to emphasize how bad the special effects are in a film I’m reviewing. What
makes this even worse is that, somehow, this movie manages to top The Legend Of
Hercules in terms of cheap looking computer effects. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, looks like it even belongs in
the same cutting room as the film it’s attached to. This isn’t just Asylum
mockbuster-levels of cheap; this looks like someone took the animations out of
one of those free action movie effects apps for smartphones and used them for
the effects. Even going past the computer effects, the make-up work here is
haphazard at best as well. Eckhart in no way looks like he has been composed of
miscellaneous body parts, and looks more like he has just been in a couple of
nasty fights. At the risk of invoking some weird derivative of Godwin’s Law,
this is actually less believable than
when Edward from Twilight was trying to convince people that he was a monster.
Put simply, with Eckhart, it’s even more obvious that they were trying to sell
his character, a walking corpse in essence, more as being sexy than being
scary.

If there’s one thing I can at least give this movie, it’s
that the acting is decent. Eckhart was a damn good choice to play Frankenstein
and he gives a certain gruffness that fits how the character is written here.
Nighy does well enough as Naberius, being authoritative and threatening as his
role requires, although in quite a few scenes his natural air of danger is
somewhat dampened by the bad demonic vocal effect they put on his voice. Don’t
fix what isn’t broken, guys. The rest of the cast, like Jai Courtney (who at
this point seems to naturally gravitate towards crap movies) and Miranda Otto,
do okay with their roles, but this is where we get to the biggest problem with
this movie: The acting is fine, but it’s not enough to turn this script into
anything worth watching.

While the dark urban fantasy setting is getting more than a
little overused in the last ten years or so, I would be willing to let it slide
if they gave something that could fill that setting and make it interesting.
Unfortunately, we get wildly inconsistent characters, a prologue that seems
tacked on because I’m guessing Beattie still wasn’t sure what era to set the
movie in at that stage, an extremely derivative villain plot and various other
subscriptions (continuous streams of issues). We keep getting characters
contradicting themselves, sometimes in the same scene, mostly from the gargoyle
queen Leonore and one of her soldiers Gideon, played by Otto and Courtney
respectively. Hell, even with contradictions, their actions are usually stupid
for their own reasons, not the least of which being that the gargoyles had no
idea just how close the demons’ headquarters were to their own until they
tricked into following Frankenstein to them. Not only that, the villain’s plans
for Frankenstein? It’s the plot of Van Helsing with Hugh Jackman copied and
pasted. Seriously, it is literally the same plot; just replace ‘vampire babies’
with ‘possessed corpses’ and the plan and Frankenstein’s role within said plan
is the exact same. You know, as much as Van Helsing gets flak with many
critics, at least the writing and effects in that weren’t nearly as bad as they
are here. There’s also a romance that’s hinted at more than a few times between
Frankenstein and Terra Wade (played by Yvonne Strzechowski), one of the
scientists working for Naberius, but it’s just dropped at the end of the film
with a loud thud that I’m guessing was meant to be explained in a future
sequel. Given how badly this movie did at the box office, I wouldn’t hold my
breath on that ever surfacing.

All in all, this is Taliban-brand terri-bad. Sure, it may
have better actors than LoH, but between the incessantly horrid writing and the
lazy special effects, this actually turns out worse at the end of it all. It
ranks lower than And So It Goes, as at least that had Diane Keaton’s singing
voice to distract me from time to time, but it’s still higher than Planes: Fire
And Rescue, which was more consistently annoying. This shoves it right into the
worst films of the year so far section; I can't even recommend this as a movie to watch and laugh at

Sunday, 16 November 2014

The story of Hercules and his Twelve Labours is one of my
favourite ancient legends, so much so that the only good essay I ever wrote back in high school was on it and the reasons behind the longevity of the story. It's a tale that has been adapted numerous times before and with good reason: It's a great story with lots of potential, full of action, cunning, darkness and redemption. However, even with that in mind, I find it kind of odd that we got not one but two movie adaptations of it this year
alone. We’ve had Hercules starring Dwayne Johnson, which took a different spin
on the story and looked more at the idea of Hercules being a literal legend,
something I found quite fascinating. True, it didn’t completely succeed at that
idea, and it had more than a few narrative issues, but overall it was a decent
watch. Prior to that, we also had today’s film which was a relatively more
straightforward telling of the origin of Hercules. This is The Legend Of
Hercules.

The plot: Hercules (played by Kellan Lutz) is in love with
Hebe (played by Gaia Weiss), a woman betrothed to his brother Iphicles (played
by Liam Garrigan). Upon objecting to her marrying his brother, Hercules is sent
to battle by King Amphitryon (played by Scott Adkins) and is captured as a
slave. With everyone back home believing him dead, he must fight his way back
to Greece and bring the reign of Amphitryon to an end, fulfilling his purpose
as a gift from Hera to destroy the King.

As much as I don’t want to take the easy route and just bash
the male lead because he had a major role in the Twilight films… Good God, you’d
be hard-pressed to find a less charismatic portrayal of Hercules anywhere. He
shows all of no emotion in every scene, whether he’s rousing his army for battle
or hearing of his mother’s death. Speaking of rousing his army, he has that
little charisma that I doubt he could get one guy to follow him in a conga line,
let alone an entire army against their king. I had a lot of similar issues with
Sullivan Stapleton as Not-Leonidas in 300: Rise Of An Empire, but at least his
character had good blocking in the sex scene (No, seriously, that fight-fucking
scene is the best part of the whole movie). Hercules here is called Alcides
more times than he is Hercules, and there’s a reason for that.

Speaking of Not-Leonidas and 300, it's kind of amazing how badly this movie wants to be 300. From the fight scenes that also make heavy
use of speed ramping to the costume design that is near identical, to the
fact that King Amphitryon looks exactly like Leonidas; this can’t all be
coincidence. Well, talk about fighting above your weight class, because this is
nowhere near that good. For starters, the effects work is absolutely awful. I
mean, this is Asylum-level crap right here and sometimes falls short of even
that. The green-screening is outright laughable and makes most internet shows
look like Avatar; any scene that involves actors falling looks horrible. The
CGI and practical effects look just as bad; there’s one scene where Hercules and his brother are
fighting the Nemean Lion and it looks like a friggin’ sock puppet. We also get
some mediocre fight scenes; sure, they do a lot to ape 300’s camera work but
none of the brutality or finesse. Admittedly, there is a cool moment when
Hercules uses an enemy soldier’s bow while it’s still on his back, but nothing
else works in that regard.

One of the best parts of the story of Hercules is the wide
variety of tasks he has to undertake, not to mention the strength and cunning
needed to carry them out. I mentioned before that the Nemean Lion is in this,
and unfortunately it is the only thing from the Twelve Labours that we see in
this movie. To make matters worse, when Hercules does kill the Lion, his brother takes credit for it and it's never mentioned again. You know, Dwayne Johnson’s Hercules didn’t even really do any of the Labours
he claimed he did, but even then we
still got to see most of them. No such luck here; instead we get a very generic
love story with bland supporting characters (alongside our very cardboard main
character) that has several moments where it tries its hardest to sound lyrical
with its dialogue, but instead comes across like high school poetry writings. The legend itself is all sorts of mangled here too, with Hera actively wanting Hercules to be born and allowing Zeus to impregnate Hercules' mother. That, on its own, is so far removed from pretty much every other telling of the story that it is astounding. Yes, I know that variety is needed especially with a story this well-worn, but don't replace what we've already seen with stupid. How Hercules finally gets his divine powers is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the laziest plot points I've seen in any movie.

All in all, this is all kinds of bad: The effects, the acting,
the writing, the direction; it all sucks. This is better than And So It Goes,
as at least no-one made any uncomfortable rape jokes in this one, but it scores
lower than Deliver Us From Evil, which was also terrible but had me laughing
throughout because of it. This just falls short of being one of the worst
movies of the year, and that is literally the nicest thing I can say about this
movie.

But what did you
think of the movie? Think I was too harsh? Agree with me? A bit of both? Let me
know in the comments section below.

Tuesday, 11 November 2014

I am not a purely religious person, but I don’t identify as
an Atheist either. Since I don’t think what I believe falls under agnosticism
either, I have taken to calling myself a ‘cynical spiritualist’. I believe that
everyone is free to believe what they want without being persecuted. However, if someone uses their
religious leanings as their reasoning for doing stupid/vile things (this counts
for Atheists as well), for example the Westboro Baptist Church, I believe that we
are all well within our rights to mock them for doing so. Punish for what they
do, not what they think. My own personal philosophies have been brewed over
time from a mixture of tenets from different religions (e.g. Christianity,
Buddhism, Ancient Egyptian), and they continue to build themselves over time.
I have, at different points in my life, identified as a Christian and a rather
militant Atheist, so I like to think that I can look at today’s film with some
level of objectivity. Then again, talking about religion on the internet is
like coating yourself in gasoline: You’re kind of asking for flames. Nevertheless,
we press forward. This is God’s Not Dead.

The plot: Josh Wheaton (played by Shane Harper) is a
freshman in college who starts in a philosophy class led by Professor Radisson
(played by Kevin Sorbo). Radisson asks all of his students to admit that God is
dead as part of his class and Josh, as a Christian, can’t bring himself to do
it. Josh is then asked to, over three seminars, convince Radisson and the rest
of the class that God isn’t dead, or else he will fail the class.

The acting is extremely bland for the most part, with only
Kevin Sorbo bringing in an actual performance as a character. Sorbo, even if he
has a penchant for not choosing the best material, is by no means a bad actor
and proves here with serious conviction and charisma. The rest of the cast
really phone it in, which is honestly fair enough given how most of the cast is
made up of pretty unknown actors. The one exception to this is Dean Cain as
Mark, Radisson’s brother-in-law, who ultimately gives the same performance he
does with pretty much everything else he’s been in: Cardboard. It’s sad that he
had more screen presence as the host of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not then he does
here (or in anything else he's been in, for that matter). We also have a few cameos in this film, like Willie and Korie Robertson
from Duck Dynasty along with Christian pop-rock group Newsboys, and they are
pretty standard in terms of “celebrity” cameos. The music, while pretty
Hallmark-production quality, is passable for the production we’re dealing with
here. We even get the lead actor singing on the soundtrack, where… he gives about
the same conviction as his on-screen performance. The movie ends with a big
concert by Newsboys, for very weird plot reasons, and honestly that concert was
easily the best part of the movie purely because of the music.

Okay, time to bring the ugly stick and ugly is easily the
best word to describe this truly reprehensible piece of propaganda. As you
could no doubt tell from the plot, this film is very far removed from anything
like reality, but it gets worse the further you dig into it. Radisson, the ‘Atheist’
that this film paints so vividly as a villain that even the blind can see it,
is such a straw man caricature of what Atheists actually are that it’s kind of
offensive, even as someone who doesn’t identify as that anymore. He’s
totalitarian in the classroom, demanding that everyone agree that God is dead,
constantly making snide comments about how BS Christianity is and how everyone
who believes in such an archaic fairy tale are stupid. This is like saying that
every Christian acts like Pat Robertson, in terms of horrific stereotyping. In
the real world, this man would not have a) a job, b) a wife (who is a Christian, to make things even more surreal) or c) anyone
willing to actually speak with him without throwing things at him. In fact, I
reckon he would probably be in jail if he carried on like he does here. And to
make matters even worse, judging by how he’s carried himself off in interviews,
this is actually what Kevin Sorbo thinks Atheists
are like. He’s gone on record saying that Atheists just have to believe in God, or else
they wouldn’t be getting so angry about him. Maybe that’s
why he plays the role so well: He thinks it’s the reality… and if that is the
case, I begin to suspect that his many years on the sets of Hercules and
Andromeda have seriously warped his version of reality because, barring a few
exceptions, Atheists are not like
this in the real world, and even the ones who are aren’t so to this ridiculous
degree.

If Radisson was the only putrid character in this film, then
maybe this film could have limped on
its way. But no, we get a few non-Christian bad guys in this film, the only
other one coming close (or possibly surpassing him) in terms of being a bag of
dicks would be Mark, a man so vile that he dumps his girlfriend after she says
that she has cancer… seriously. We also get a couple of Muslims with Ayisha
and her father; Ayisha is a closet Christian who hides it from her father, and
from the look of things she was right to as he savagely beats her upon finding
out. I’d be aiming all of my hatred towards the Christians for making everyone
look bad, if they weren’t also making themselves
look bad as well. Here, based on how Josh Wheaton (God, what I wouldn’t give
for Joss Whedon to be involved and make this at least a bit better) is
portrayed as the hero of the story, Christians are shown to be hypocritical,
self-righteous bigoted assholes with severe inferiority complexes. Through
Radisson, they keep pushing this idea that Atheists are trying to dominate over
Christianity and make them conform to their beliefs by force, an idea so stupid
that even the depths of low-budget Rapture movies would call it out. Josh even
says in one line that “God wants someone to defend him” when he’s asked why he doesn’t
just leave the class and avoid all this idiocy. It’s kind of hilariously
pathetic to think that, in a world where God-believing people vastly outnumber Atheists/agnostics/etc.,
there are some that feel the need to defend themselves against an enemy that
doesn’t even care about their beliefs. I’ve mentioned before how much I hate
the phrase ‘First World Problems’, but here I honestly can’t help but use the
term ‘First Faith Problems’ to describe this mindset.

Worse still, even ignoring the theology of the script, the
story is riddled with holes that you could drive entire fleets of cars through.
In one scene, we have Josh debunking Stephen Hawking’s theory of the origin of
the universe due to circular logic, and yet in another he says “Creation
happened, because God said it should happen”. Anyone else want some cake? The
entire point behind the debate is a whole other bucket of stupid, as Radisson’s
stated reason for wanting them to deny God is to avoid debates of his existence
in class. You know, even as someone who hasn’t gone to a philosophy class
before, that sounds exactly like the
kind of thing you would discuss in a philosophy classroom, but hey what do I
know?

Also, we have three separate crises of faith to deal with
here: Firstly, we have Amy (the one Mark dumped for being so selfish and not
thinking about him while she went out and got cancer) a reporter who is also an
Atheist, the only relatively sane one but that might be because she becomes
born-again by the end of the movie. Now her story, in a vacuum, could have made
for a decent movie all on its own, removed from all this ‘proving that God
does/doesn’t exist’ nonsense, as the framework is solid enough: She starts as
an Atheist, a rather militant Atheist but nowhere near Radisson’s level, but
after learning that she has cancer begins to think otherwise about her beliefs.
It’s been done before, sure, but at least it would have given something that
isn’t as bankrupt as this. The
second is of Radisson himself, who it turns out was a Christian until his mother died of cancer (connection to Amy?)
and he grew resentful of God. It is with this revelation that Radisson’s
atheism, the entire reason for the main plot essentially, dissolves into a big
puddle of poor ideas, but it definitely conforms to Sorbo’s own beliefs on Atheists,
showing yet another weird bit of circular logic. Lastly, we have undoubtedly
the weakest of the three: Reverend Dave can’t get any of his cars (His own car,
and then a few rentals) to start working. Don’t worry, though, it gets fixed
once he and his friend pray to God for it to work, which it does. So, in this
film’s universe, God is more of a mechanic than a healer. Good to know(!) God also apparently couldn't spring for decent sound effects for his universe, because the numerous cars that fail to start in no way sound like real car ignitions. The
biggest issue is definitely the end ‘message’ that we’re supposed to take from
it: You should have the freedom to believe whatever you want to. Noble gesture…
completely ruined by your obvious Hobson’s choice in making everyone except
yourselves out to be horrible human beings, but a noble gesture nonetheless.

All in all, short of quoting Deuteronomy, this ticks all the
boxes for terri-bad religious propaganda, only it does worse than that
by painting Christians themselves just as badly if not worse than it does
non-Christians. What Reefer Madness did for marijuana, this film does for
non-Christians. I could write my own book full of just how morally and
structurally ugly this trash is, but I personally think that this review is
long enough as is. What makes it even worse is that, buried somewhere deep
inside this mess, is at least one idea for a film that could genuinely work. This
is worse than The Best Of Me, as at least that film had better acting on
average, but it still fares better than Any Day Now, which offended me on a
more personal level. Yet another entry for one of the worst movies of the year,
and probably one of the very worst I’ve seen since starting the lists.

Also, before I get people putting words on my page: No, I don't see this as an accurate depiction of Christians. I don't even see this as an accurate depiction of humans.

Monday, 10 November 2014

Even though I have been listing all the movies I watch each
year for a couple of years now, I have only really started dedicating myself to
seeing all the ones I could in the last several months. One of the key events
that lead me to doing this was when my therapist recommended a movie for me to
watch as part of my therapy. It was a British rom-com called About Time, which
I thoroughly enjoyed and got me thinking more about the idea of movie-watching
as a form of therapy, something I might revisit at a later date. Anyway, it was
a short while later that I decided to go with my current plan of watching all
the new releases, as well as revisiting as many of the movies from the last few
years that I can, and with that I gained a certain… relationship with romantic
comedies. While every other critic has cinematic PTSD, given how bad most
rom-coms get, I look at new releases in the genre as a little reminder of
something that got me to where I am now as a critic. Doesn’t hurt that today’s
movie also comes from the same general geographical location: The Irish rom-com
Love, Rosie.

The plot: Rosie and Alex (played by Lily Collins and Sam
Claflin respectively) have been best friends since they were little, and Rosie
gets the feeling that she might love him. However, through a series of events,
they start to drift apart and she wonders if she missed her chance at being
with her one true love.

The reason why most critics have such a low opinion of
romantic comedies, generally speaking, is because there is not a whole lot of
variety within the genre. To quote one fellow critic, Matthew Buck AKA Film
Brain of the web series Bad Movie Beatdown, “… there’s only so many ways that
you can get two people to come together.” Very few films actually manage to
stand out from the rest, and only do so by adding something fresh to the mix:
About Time added a minor sci-fi twist to the proceedings and came out with
something genuinely touching; Silver Linings Playbook has an entire scene that
acts as a big middle finger to one of the biggest problems with most rom-coms,
and we end up with what I consider to be one of the best films I’ve seen since
doing these lists. Of course, you often get films that wear every cliché on
their sleeves, and we end up with the irritating mess that is ‘The Best Of Me’.
However, what we get here is none of these. Instead, we are met with something
possibly even worse: Normality.

This is about as bog-standard as you can get for a rom-com
without directly lifting scenes from Sleepless In Seattle. The entire plot is
hinged around a lot of coincidences and bad timing: Every time Rosie finally
works up the courage to tell Alex her feelings, something happens that makes
her unable to and vice versa. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a big ticking clock
that counts down to the inevitable moment when the two finally come together,
with tension so thin you could cut it by breathing on it. If you’ve seen the
trailer for this, you’ve essentially seen the entire movie; no surprises, no
fresh ideas, just standard romantic fluff… and that’s not necessarily a bad
thing in it of itself. If all we wanted to see was just new films every time,
the home video market wouldn’t have ever gotten off the ground. Within the
confines of the genre, the innards are serviceable: The two leads have good
chemistry together; the plot goes through the motions we’ve seen before, but it
doesn’t do anything largely offensive and/or boring; and the dialogue is actually rather cute and funny. There is one part,
writing wise, that did make me scratch my head a bit though: There’s a running
motif involving pointing to locations on a globe that hints at some sort of
metaphysical connection between the two that shows up in only a couple of
scenes and then completely forgotten. It feels out of place, but at least they
didn’t take it as far as Best of Me in terms of trite romantic destiny
bullcrap. We also get the usual rom-com trope of the disposable love interests,
with some seriously transparent jerks on display here.

Probably the biggest talking point that I can see with this
movie is the music, which is… interesting, to say the least. This has got some
of the bizarrely fitting music I’ve seen this year outside of Bad Neighbors:
While the traditional score hits all the notes it needs to, the soundtrack has
some seriously weird additions. How weird? Well, when Rosie gives birth to her daughter,
the song ‘Push It’ by Salt-N-Pepa is playing. I’d make a joke about that, but
the fact is that this is pretty damn close to a reference joke that I’d make in
one of my video reviews. Most of the music is like that; it has a heavy
favoritism for hip-hop (which suits me just fine) as well as Lily Allen, with
one of her songs being used in a very cathartic break-up scene that almost
feels like self-parody with how well the song fits the scene. Kudos to Ralph
Wengenmayr (And thank god this isn’t a video, ‘cause there’s no way in hell that I
could pronounce that) on that front. Aside from the music, something else that
stood out to me was the cinematography. This has quite a few ‘home-video’
moments in term of camera work, with needless shaky-cam in fairly basic scenes
and, I swear to Rodriguez, the most awkward zoom-in I have ever seen in an
officially released movie that isn’t
found footage. Seriously, it looks that bad.

All in all, this is okay for the movie it is. If you need a
new date movie to check out because you’ve watched all the others, this will
work as a new title to get into but you won’t get anything all that new either.
I am officially getting annoyed with my own list at this point, because this is
yet another movie that falls just short of the cinematic roadblock that is ‘Edge
of Tomorrow’. I swear, I don’t intend for this to keep happening; it just does.
Not as good as EoT, but better than This Is Where I Leave You, as at least I
didn’t go into this with any expectations that could leave me disappointed.

But, as always, I would love to hear what you thought of it.
Comment with your own thoughts on the film, or you can just tell me how wrong I
am about this movie and how much I suck with as much vitriol as you can muster.
Either way, feel free.

Sunday, 9 November 2014

As a critic, I’m always fascinated to see a film that has
other critics divided, and as of right now there is no better safe bet on
getting a film like that than one that has Christopher Nolan involved. While a
lot of my contemporaries were slamming The Dark Knight Rises, I personally
loved the hell out of it; when Man Of Steel had the world either loving it or
hating it, I was safely in the latter even without putting my general disinterest
in Superman into the equation. This is yet another movie that really could go
either way in terms of my reaction to it: Interstellar.

The plot: With the world being ravaged by dust storms that
threaten to wipe out the human race, Cooper (played by Matthew McConaughey) is
assigned to a manned space flight to find a new habitable planet for humanity
to move to, leaving behind his children and father-in-law.

The definitive stand-out with this film is the effects work,
which is absolutely gorgeous. Special effects studio Double Negative has
developed a very healthy relationship with Nolan, having previously done SFX
for several of his films including Inception, and it’s here that we see more of
that tree bear fruit. A great showcase of this is the initial wormhole Cooper
and his crew use to travel to the galaxy where several potential new home
planets reside, which they show as a three-dimensional object in space as they
travel through it. The result is a very trippy, but amazing, effect that shows
a lot of care and effort. I will say this, though: I didn’t see this film at
IMAX, and given how disorienting the effect is at first, I think I wouldn’t
have liked it nearly as much on that larger screen. We also get to see an
alteration of the effect used in Inception where the landscape folded back onto
itself, only used here to form a cylindrical structure that looks really
impressive.

We’re dealing with a typical all-star cast, given this
director’s pedigree, and for the most part they do a great job. McConaughey,
who is experiencing one of the best career revivals possible given his track
record over the last few years (Magic Mike, Dallas Buyers Club, Killer Joe, The
Wolf Of Wall Street), maintains his pace here with his usual Southern wiseass
with a heart of gold routine, which he pulls off flawlessly. In the scenes
where he comes face to face with how much his daughter has aged back on Earth,
he shows real heart-crushing intensity that will surely bring a tear or two to
the eye. The actresses who play Cooper’s daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Fay,
Jessica Chastain and Ellen Burstyn) all do great jobs of portraying the
character at different stages of her life, with Mackenzie (AKA Reneesme from
the Sparklepire series) being one of the few child actors who’s actually able
to act alongside the adults; Jessica bringing her usual skill to the role, only
in a film that deserves it unlike The Tree Of Life or Zero Dark Thirty; and
Ellen, while having a very small role, doing well also. We also get a great
performance from a certain surprise actor (Won’t say who because *SPOILERS*) that definitely helps
elevate this film even higher during the second act. The only bad spot that
comes to mind on the acting front is Cooper’s son Tom, whom as a teenager is
initially portrayed as a major asshole, but that would be more a fault of the
writing than the acting, since Timothée Chalamet does fine with the role he’s
given.

Now to talk about my favourite part of the movie, since we’re
talking about actors/characters: The robots TARS and CASE. Their design is very
Jenga-blocky and their movement is both complex and yet rudimentary, given the
multiple purposes they fulfill as part of Cooper’s crew. Their in-story
programming, on the other hand, is seriously something I wish other SF stories
would touch upon; these robots have not only been built with the ideas of honesty
and humour (among other things), but with degrees
of each: They’re mostly honest but not entirely, because we as irrational
beings aren’t 100% honest with each other either for various reasons; and they have
senses of humour, but not to the point where everything they say is jocular.
This, as far as I’m concerned, is genius; Having artificial intelligence
interacting with humans requires them to be more human in order for the
interactions to succeed, so giving them these kind of human personalities and
traits makes perfect sense. Having them tweaked in such a way so that they are more in line with how we show them in regular conversation makes it even better. That and their quick and funny jabs are greatly
welcomed given how bleak this film can get. Also, for those of you who read the
works of Asimov, it looks like the Nolan brothers did as well.

Now for the script side of things, which means *SPOILERS* though I will try to keep
them to a minimum. Having one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists as
a consultant on the film, as well as one of the people who originally conceived
of the idea behind the film, lends a lot of credibility to the scientific
aspect of the plot, and for the most part it works. This isn’t absolute hard
science, but it is a lot harder than we usually get in films, save for maybe
Gravity. Actually, Gravity is a good place to go with this since this movie
takes a good first step and also
refrains from sound effects in space much like that film did. The writing, when
dealing with the time dilation involved in their journey and its effect on the
relationships of the characters, feels very reminiscent of the anime Voices Of
A Distant Star, a 20-minute OVA that I highly recommend readers check out, even
if they didn’t like this film. However, unlike a similar situation I ran into
with Transcendence where the plot of the film felt similar to a TV show episode
I remembered watching, this isn’t a simple matter of the show did it better;
this is more the show did it differently, which is acceptable. Not to say that
this film is derivative, as both go about the concept in differing ways; this
is just something that caught my attention, plus it gives me a chance to flex
that otaku muscle. We also gets some nice development of the world in the wake
of the unknown disaster that is inches away from wiping humanity out: There’s a
rather cute scene where Murphy’s teacher explains to Cooper about the Moon
landing being faked in order to bankrupt the Soviets, which shows some real
depth in terms of this film’s world-building. With their survival at the
forefront of their concerns, they need as many people farming crops for food as
possible (Considering how most types of crops have completely failed by the
time the story begins, they need all the help they can get), so they change
some things around in order to keep people focused on surviving on Earth,
rather than ‘wasting their time’ fleeing to another planet; nice seeing the
Ministry of Truth still doing what they do best. The rest of the dialogue and plot is well done, although I
really did sick and tired of Michael Caine’s character repeating the ‘Do not go
quietly into that good night’ poem before too long.

Then, we get to the final act, where the science takes a
very sudden turn. Whereas the rest of the film stayed relatively realistic, we
then enter into Star Trek territory in terms of scientific plausibility,
specifically Star Trek Voyager given that show’s fascination with spatial
anomalies. The explanations they give for it, and in turn some of the main
elements of the plot, is a little too
hard to swallow, although I will give the film credit for one thing: Trying to portray fifth-dimensional space, on a two-dimensional plane,
is easily one of the biggest challenges for a filmmaker, but through an
incredible bit of effects work, this film managed to pull it off. The science
of the thing isn’t the issue, but more the plot that it’s wrapped around; the
rest of it is perfectly serviceable and very engaging, and again what exactly
happens isn’t the issue but more the reasons why it’s happening, which I found myself calling bullshit on a bit.
If you want to see the sort of story we get here in the finale, but more
fleshed out and done a hell of a lot better, go see Predestination if you haven’t
already.

All in all, this is a really good bit of speculative
fiction, if flawed around its multi-dimensional edges. It won’t get you
thinking too hard about its themes,
but its visuals and acting, along with some solid writing behind it all, should
keep you more than engaged for its seemingly cumbersome three hour running time.
This is better than The Judge, as this has a lot more interesting ideas to play
with, but it falls short of The Lego Movie, which definitely has more universal
appeal. This goes into ‘very-good-to-excellent’ on the list, with a hearty recommendation from
me.

Saturday, 8 November 2014

Pokémon: A franchise that is so big that it may one day
topple Japan’s own government; a TV show that is one of the few anime series
that everyone knows about, guaranteed; and a game series that has a special
place in the hearts of children and man-children alike. Yes, Pokémon is all of
these things and I am a fan of the games myself. I specify ‘games’ because the
TV show isn’t really my thing. Honestly, out of all the different anime titles
that we grew up on (Yu-Gi-Oh!, Digimon, Dragon Ball Z, etc.), as a show Pokémon would have to be the
weakest. Don’t get me wrong: The games are still awesome, even though with the
advent of ‘Mega Evolutions’, my mother’s outcries that Pokémon and Digimon are
exactly the same is starting to make too much sense, and while I haven’t played
any games past Emerald (I kind of fell out with portable gaming somewhere down
the track), I do still find myself playing homebrews on my computer
(Zeta/Omicron is pretty damn good). So, with the 17th installment of
the Pokémon movie series coming out at my local cinema, I decided to head out
with a couple of friends and check it out. This is Pokémon The Movie: Diancie
And The Cocoon Of Destruction.

The plot: The Legendary Pokémon Diancie, unable to create a
new Heart Diamond to keep her people safe, journeys outside of her Diamond
Domain to the over world to find Xerneas, another Legendary, in hopes that it
can unlock the power within her to make one. Along the way, she encounters Ash
and his friends, whom agree to help her find Xerneas, all the while Diancie is
being hunted by several groups because of her power to create diamonds.

Let’s start with the animation; it’s a mess. While some of
the CGI work is surprisingly good (The diamonds seriously look like real
diamonds), the line animation is standard for Pokémon, in that it is very cheap
in places. The amount of detail on the characters’ faces gets extremely minimal
in places, and the character models on default are pretty basic as is. Hell, at
one point, the outlines on the character models gets about twice as thick as
everywhere else in the movie with a very jarring and noticeable effect. Even
ignoring the budget-cut moments, the more traditional animation and the CGI
look as far removed as they possibly can while sharing the same screen with
each other, making for a very disjointed look.

There’s a specific line that caught my attention: It’s where
Ash tells Diancie not to cry because crying doesn’t solve anything. I found this to be rather ironic, considered what happened to Ash in the first Pokémon movie. I originally thought that this was some sort of sly jab at the original,
as an in-joke for the viewers, but I quickly discovered that this film is
nowhere near clever enough to be making that kind of reference. I’ve made brief
mention before about there being a difference between a family film and a kid’s
film, but at the core of it, that difference is that family films are enjoyable
for everyone due to it not feeling like it talks down to children, and thus to
adults. With this in mind, Cocoon Of Destruction is one of the kiddiest kid’s
films I’ve seen in quite some time. If it isn’t shoe-horning in messages about
friendship like this is Care Bears all over again, it’s blatant exposition on
the plot. If it’s not exposition on the plot, then it’s just plain
re-explaining events that we saw only a few minutes earlier, or repeating what another character has said for pointless clarification.

Even ignoring the facepalm-worthy dialogue, the plot is all
over the place as well. The running time is cluttered by all of these different
groups trying to catch Diancie, like Ninja Riot, which is a name so on-the-nose
even Steven Seagal wouldn’t touch it; Marilyn Flame, which sounds like a drag
queen; and Argus Steel, whose heel turn is so telegraphed that I don’t even
feel the need to place my usual spoiler tag on this, and yet the film expects
us to be surprised by it. We also get Team Rocket, who are hands-down the best
part of the entire film, because they actually have jokes written into their
lines as opposed to everyone else; they aren’t the best one-liners, but they
were welcomed all the same. Seeing the team’s Wobbuffet do its schtick is great
as always, and it was kind of funny watching James swim on air for a few
seconds. There is also a major problem with the resolution, involving a deus ex
machina that not only stuck out like a sore thumb when it was introduced, but
doesn’t even do anything of significance when it’s first used; *SPOILERS* It involves Diancie and her
Mega Evolution, which… doesn’t really do anything of use during the big battle
with Yvaltal; it only becomes useful in the epilogue when she uses the Mega
Evolution’s power to create the new Heart Diamond, AFTER Yvaltal is defeated by
Xerneas without the assistance of Diancie. This makes the entire affair just a
massive fan-wank that could have had
some purpose, but they blew their load too early and we end up with just a mess
for the climax. I swear, that sentence wasn’t meant to sound that way when I
started it.

As for the battle scenes, they are decent enough: The finale
with Yveltal decimating the forest and everything in it is pretty spectacular,
and Pikachu’s Thunderbolt is still as iconic as ever. Given how little I know
about the new generation of Pokémon, seeing some of the newer ones in action
was pretty cool, especially Ninja Riot’s Greninja. If I ever start playing Pokémon
X/Y, I know which starter I’M going with.

All in all, this is… not good. If you’re a diehard Pokémon fan,
and I mean “You would commit acts of international terrorism to get your hands
on a legit Pikachu Illustrator Card” level fan, you probably won’t get much out
of this aside from some fanservice involving the new Legendary Diancie (No, not
THAT kind). This is better than Legends Of Oz: Dorothy’s Return, as this
actually feels like a movie, but it falls short of One Direction: Where We Are,
which had better music… no seriously, the new version of the original Pokémon theme
is so weak sauce that it’s unbelievable. ‘Mediocre-to-bad’, meaning not
recommended although a special addendum is put here for Pokémon fans, whom might like it.

Friday, 7 November 2014

The trailer for this movie made it look absolutely awful; the
premise at face value is one of the worst for a film this year, if not the last
few years; the comedy bits we got were limp and just not funny; and when the
best part of the whole thing is a Method Man song being played over it, you’re
not doing a good job at selling your movie. But I have written before about my
expectations with movies and how they aren’t always on par, so really this
could go either way.

The plot: Two roommates, Ryan (played by Jake Johnson) and
Justin (played by Damon Wayans Jr.), dress up as cops for a high school
reunion. They soon discover, after a walk on the town, that people mistake them
for real cops. Liking the attention they’re getting, they continue the charade,
complete with fake police car, and end up getting tangled with real criminals.

We’re dealing with buddy cop movie here, and this is where
most of the good points are brought up with other critics: The chemistry
between Johnson and Wayans. Admittedly, they do work well together (Certainly
better than Kevin Hart and Ice Cube), but the material they’re given isn’t
great most of the time. This feels more like a collection of skits in terms of
the jokes, and I’ll definitely say that Wayans comes out the better of the two.
True, more than a few of his jokes are about him being black, because God knows
that those jokes never get old, but
overall he gets the better material. His best scenes are when he has to go
undercover to find out the main antagonist’s plan, showing off one of the
funnier portrayals of a guy off his tits on drugs that I’ve seen (Still no
DiCaprio), and when he pitches his idea for a video game to his company, which
almost makes this movie feel like it’s trying to say something of significance
about the difference between the public perception of police work (i.e. from video
games, movies, etc.) versus the reality. Of course, the latter is hurt by not
only the fact that it is somewhat out of place with the rest of this movie, not
to mention the fact that the game company seriously just poo-poos a game about
being a policeman (L.A. Noire ring any bells?), but these scenes still work
regardless.

I will give this film credit in that it isn’t nearly as
stupid with its premise as its trailer made it look: We see scenes of Ryan
getting properly into his role as a fake police officer, looking up protocols
and self-defense techniques that cops use (From YouTube of all places, but it
shows he’s at least trying), and Justin looking into the laws involved because,
you know, imitating an officer of the law is all kinds of illegal, not to
mention the other shit they get up to and get hold of. I was expecting to
completely hate these two, but they actually came off rather well: Ryan is a
bit of an asshole, and a failure to boot, but you can at least understand why
he would want to be a policeman for more than just the possibility of hooking
up with sorority sisters (Yeah, that scene from the trailer still looks bad in
context, I’ll admit that); and Justin is a good straight man to play off of
him, being a lot more self-aware of just how ridiculous this entire situation
is, but also allows Ryan to be the enabler and convince him to join in against
his better judgement to get some fun in his life (not to mention getting away
from his dick of a boss), which I can understand as far as his character is
concerned.

I referenced Ride Along earlier, and since my knowledge of
buddy cop movies is pretty limited, I’ll make a few more comparisons between
the two. For starters, I will say that the bad guys in both movies are pretty
cool. Whereas Ride Along got an unexpected but welcome extended cameo from Laurence
Fishburne, here we get James D’Arcy, whom for some reason I kept mistaking for
Ethan Hawke for most of the film. D’Arcy does a great job as Mossi Kasic,
giving the character a very manic yet intimidating air to him. We also get Andy
Garcia as his partner in crime, a casting decision that I slightly scratched my
head at but for no other reason than that it started giving me Little Fockers
flashbacks. All the same, he does well with his role with a calm yet unsettling
demeanor. One final note while we’re talking about actors: Keegan-Michael Key
as Pupa is a definite scene-stealer here, and I’m glad for it.

All in all though, despite how positive this all sounds,
this is just okay. Keep in mind that the comedy is a lot more miss than hit,
and it does take a while to really get going with more of the hits, and all
these positives aren’t exactly floating as easily as they were. This fares
better than Maya The Bee Movie, as at least this film felt like it had some
point in existing, but it’s not as good as The House Of Magic, which was a lot
more consistent. This is in the ‘mediocre’ section, but that’s mostly because
it isn’t consistent; it wanders a lot between being decent to just boring.

Also, a side-note: If you’re going to see this movie, expect
to hear the exact same piece of dubstep in a lot of the scenes.

Tuesday, 4 November 2014

Keanu Reeves, in my opinion, gets a bad rap. Everyone just
seems to gauge his performances with either Bill & Ted or The Matrix, as if
the guy hasn’t made any other movies apart from them. His method of acting,
which is definitely low-key but not as banal as others make him out, did him
well in movies like Devil’s Advocate, My Own Private Idaho and A Scanner
Darkly. Hell, I even liked him in the much-maligned Constantine, which I
seriously think people were too harsh on as a whole. Then again, even I can see
his duds: Much Ado About Nothing, while excellent, proved that Shakespeare isn’t
Keanu’s style in any way, The Day The Earth Stood Still was phenomenally dull
and 47 Ronin from earlier this year was just plan terri-bad. So, where does his
latest effort John Wick stand?

The plot: John Wick, a former New York mob hitman, gets
assaulted, his dog killed and his car stolen, a few short days after his wife
died due to illness. With everything giving him hope now gone, he decides to
get back to the life he left behind and carve a bloody trail of vengeance to
the people who attacked him.

Keanu does a brilliant job with his role, no ifs ands or
buts about it. It’s actually kind of surprising the nuances in his performance
(seriously): The shaking of his hands as he reads a note written by his wife,
the twitching of a vein in his neck just before he loses his cool; the man
knows what he’s doing. He delivers all the action hero one-liners with the
poise of a veteran and his angry roar against the main antagonist in one scene, the father
of the thugs who attacked him, is pretty damn cathartic. As far as the action
heroes of this year go, Keanu as John Wick is up there. The rest of the cast
don’t slouch either. Michael Nyqvist as the main antagonist Viggo Tarasov plays a great yin to Wick’s yang as his performance gets more and more manic as the
movie progresses; Willem Dafoe, Ian McShane and John Leguizamo do well with
their smaller roles; and Adrianne Palicki does a fine job as Ms. Perkins who,
unlike Palicki’s performance as Wonder Woman in the unaired TV pilot, is supposed to be cold-hearted and
psychotic.

The writing does a lot of work building up Wick’s character
and how much of a badass he is, and the action scenes prove every word. It’s a
difficult job to give someone that kind of air and not have it come across as
standard action hypermachismo, and granted this does dip into that territory at
points, but it never feels undeserved. The motive for Wick’s rampage, on the
surface, seems like major overreaction… which it kind of is, but the way the
film explains it gives it some gravitas and allows you to buy into it. The
action scenes are superbly handled, with Wick using what looks like an entire
Army surplus store against Viggo’s goons with great cinematography and music to
back it up. If it seems like I’m glossing over it, know that that’s only
because there’s only so many ways I can say “The action scenes are awesome”.
Don’t discount them in any way.

The definite highlight of the film, bar none, is the setting
and the atmosphere it exudes. The way that New York’s criminal underground is
portrayed in this movie, through its distinct locales like the Continental
Hotel to the Red Circle nightclub, to the hushed tones they speak about ‘the
management’ and how people dare not to cross them and break their rules, makes
it feel like this was adapted from a novel in a very rich series. However, this
isn’t the case: This is one of the rare few movies to have come out in the last
few years that ISN’T a remake, reboot, sequel, or adapted from a pre-existing
source. From the tiny glimpses we get into the world of John Wick, it looks
like there is a lot to work with for future movies. I rarely, if ever, actively
hope for a sequel to a film, but this is definitely one of those times. Hell,
at least give us some spin-off novels.

All in all, this is damn good. All the pieces come together
(The action scenes, the direction, the acting, the writing, even the lighting)
to create a very stylish, yet very brutal, look into the tried-and-true story
of one man and his quest for vengeance, and come out with something truly
awesome. This ranks higher than Dragon Ball Z: Battle Of Gods (Dub), as this
has far superior action beats, but just short of The Maze Runner, the only
other movie that I want to see a follow-up to from this year. It’s in the ‘good-to-very-good’
section, meaning that it gets the thumbs-up from me and you should go see it.

Sunday, 2 November 2014

Starting this habit of seeing every movie available to me
has been simultaneously the best and worst idea I’ve ever had. Best because it’s
given me a chance to see movies I wouldn’t normally check out and broadening my
cinematic horizons, for better or worse; Worst because it frequently puts me
into weird positions of being incredibly out of place amongst the audiences for
some movies. Today’s film represents one of those situations, where I’m the only
guy in the cinema who doesn’t have a child watching the movie with him: This is
Maya The Bee Movie.

The plot: Maya (voiced by newcomer Coco Jack Gillies) is a
wild and carefree bee who, upon an evil plan by the royal advisor (voiced by
Jacki Weaver) to take over as Queen, has to stop her with the help of her many
insect friends, all the while trying to prevent all-out war between the bees
and the hornets.

The main message of the film is one of tolerance for people
who are different than you are, while I can certainly appreciate the sentiment,
this is as worn-out a message as can be found in mainstream cinema. It is one
of the easiest to convey because, quite frankly, it’s a matter of common sense: Be
excellent to each other, party on dude! I have seen it done countless times
before, and seen it done better
countless times before. Not that the execution is bad or anything; it’s just
lesser by comparison.

The production, as a whole, is… average. It’s a film
adaptation of an animated TV show and it looks like it, with animation that
barely passes DisneyToon levels of quality; all the characters looks extremely
rubbery, like you could just bounce them off of the walls for hours unabated.
It’s full of nice bright colours that, considering the intended age range, is
meant solely to keep the kids occupied for its relatively short running time,
giving the whole package an extremely processed and sugary feel to it. The
voice acting is passable, with a few recognizable names but none of them really
bringing the energy you would expect. Richard Roxburgh, whom say may remember
from his hamtastic roles in Van Helsing and Moulin Rouge, does okay with his
role as Flip the grasshopper but doesn’t really bring anything special to the
part. The rest are just as okay, although Miriam Margolyes gives a certain
regal dignity to her role as Queen of the hive that shows her experience in
voice acting over the others. Don’t get me wrong, Kodi Smit-McPhee blew me out
of the water with his role as Norman in Paranorman, without a doubt one of the
best family films in recent memory, but here he just does what is needed and nothing
more. The writing is quite punny, although nowhere near the level of Planes:
Fire And Rescue and also nowhere near as painful to listen to since some of the
jokes actually got a chuckle out of me, but overall it’s just baseline humour
that will mostly appeal to kids and no-one else.

Some people may give me crap for choosing to review a kid’s
movie, since they can’t be held to the same standards as other movies, but I
personally don’t think that’s true. In the last few years, we’ve had films like
The Lego Movie, Frozen, Paranorman, The Boxtrolls and the How To Train Your Dragon
series prove that family films can stand head-and-shoulders above the rest.
However, they also show why there is a clear divide between ‘family’ films and ‘children’s’
films, and this most certainly is one of the latter. If you’re going to see it
at all, wait for it come out on DVD and distract the little ones while you do
other things, because trust me there is very little that adults will get out of
this movie. It’s better than Annabelle, as this at least doesn't fail at what it attempts by the virtue of just not trying, but it's not as good as The House Of Magic, which has far superior music, animation and is just all round a film you should take the kids to instead. This is in the ‘mediocre’
section.

Could someone kindly teach some better grammar to whoever it was that named this movie?

Saturday, 1 November 2014

Everyone has different ways of celebrating Halloween: Some
go trick-or-treating even past the intended age range for the activity, some
set up elaborate pranks to scare the crap out of their friends (and hopefully
get some views on YouTube) and some stay in to watch horror movies. I, on the
other hand, went out to see my movie, but it was something that even the
grisliest of horror films wouldn’t be able to conjure up: A Nicholas Sparks
movie adaptation. This is ‘The Best Of Me’.

The plot: Dawson (played by James Marsden) and Amanda
(played by Michelle Monaghan) reunite after their high school romance 21 years
earlier (where they are portrayed by Luke Bracey and Liana Libretto
respectively) and they start to rekindle their relationship.

While I’m still capable of being charitable, I will admit
that the actors do alright with the material given. Gerald McRaney, who plays
the resident father figure of the film, actually does a good job with his role
and makes for the best part of the movie whenever he’s on screen. My patience
ends there, however, as this is a movie where the writing is the grave that
it lies in. I will refrain from using the words ‘chick flick’ in the
rest of this review since it keeps being used as a put-down term when it really
shouldn’t be; The Fault In Our Stars undoubtedly fits into that category and
yet I found it to be a very good watch. However,
know that The Best Of Me is definitely one of them in the worst possible
context: Easy and mindless wish fulfillment romance shlock.

How bad does the pandering get here? There is a gardening
scene involving young Dawson that exists for no other reason than for him to get his shirt off. The writers seem
to have really loved Dawson, because he gets the most backstory in this movie
at the other characters’ expense. Come the end of the movie, we know a fair
amount about Dawson and his upbringing in a redneck criminal family, and yet we
learn very little about Amanda aside from her parents being rich. That’s a
problem with almost all of the characters here, including Dawson: They’re all
incredibly flat and unengaging, save for Gerald McRaney as Tuck whom might have
saved this movie if he was in more scenes. The clichéd writing feels like it
pooled from every single romantic film ever made to give them ‘character’ (You
know that scene where the love interest’s father tries to bribe the male lead
to stay away from his daughter? Yeah, we get one of those here too), epitomized
by the ever-present theme of ‘destiny’, an idea so hackneyed that even most
modern romance films make fun of it themselves. Even though the idea of destiny
and how unlikely it is that two people who are true soul mates would meet each
other is shown in many films that involve a romantic interest, this film takes
it to such ridiculous degrees that you would need near-superhuman strength to
suspend your disbelief enough to buy into any of this. We’re talking ‘She
dreamed that I was singing to her while I was actually in another country
singing that exact same song and thinking of her’ levels of convolution.

What about the relationship between the leads, the core of
any good romantic movie? Well, suffice to say, I have seen better chemistry in
the making of ecstasy tablets than in our leads. It’s actually at that point
where Amanda has better chemistry with her own son than she does with Dawson…
and you have yet to realize just how bad that sounds. Throughout the majority
of the flashback scenes of the two when they were young, Dawson keeps insisting
that she should stay away from him because of his family (which, in all
honesty, is a legit point to bring up), but she stays with him because love is
stupid. It’s only when Dawson ends up in jail, when Amanda has pretty much
proven that she will stand by him no matter what happens to him, that he
officially breaks it off and doesn’t see her again until the story picks up 21
years later. What’s worse is that Dawson being this oblivious to how much
Amanda loves him is intentional and even admitted to in the dialogue. Flaw or
feature, it still makes him an idiot.

So, aside from the writing and mild acting, what else is
wrong? The editing, which is oddly enough something I don’t often get to
complain about with movies. The transitions between the past and present are
incredibly awkward and feel like the editor for Game Grumps hijacked the
production at times with how abrupt they are, although there is one exception
with Dawson and a record player that was well done. Also, there was a scene
where the ADR for Amanda was at straight-to-DVD levels, where she was talking
and yet her mouth clearly wasn’t moving. I can say, without a hint of irony,
that I could have done a better job editing this myself.

And now, the big one: The ending, which means *SPOILERS*, although trust me you’re
missing out on all of nothing. This has to be one of the most rage-inducing
endings I’ve sat through in a long while. One of the writers, Will Fetters, was
also the writer of the also-saccharine rom-drama Remember Me starring Robert
Pattinson, which just goes to show that the man has a flair for surprisingly awful
resolutions to his movies. Okay, so Amanda’s son gets into a car accident and
needs a heart transplant; at the same time, Dawson gets into an altercation
with his father after he tries to rescue a friend’s son from him. Dawson ends
up shot dead, and his heart is transplanted into Amanda’s son. I don’t know
what’s worse: The fact that this stupefying resolution was given the go ahead,
or that it is so intensely telegraphed that I spent most of the third act
praying that they wouldn’t be that stupid. The only way this could be worse is
if this movie went in the direction of ‘Return To Me’ with David Duchovny,
which had a similar plot point about heart transplants, and Amanda and her son
suddenly developed a romantic relationship because of that connection to
Dawson. Actually, if I’m being completely honest, that might make for a better
movie than what we ultimately get. We’d have had a more interesting love story
at the very least.

All in all, this is an absolutely horrible movie to sit
through. It’s not even the kind of bad that’s riffable, so you could sit down
with your friends and just make fun of it as you go; it’s just plain awful.
This is better than Any Day Now, as this movie didn’t insult my intelligence
quite as much as that movie did, but it’s worse than Into The Storm, as that
movie at least had decent weather effects. This gets a rightfully deserved
position among the worst movies of the year so far. Even if you’re being
dragged along to it by a significant other, avoid at all costs.

But… I don’t want to be the final word on anything, so if
any of you have seen this movie, what did you think of it? Did you like it, or
did you hate it as much as I did? Either way, I’d love to hear your opinions on
it.